Rebecca Liao, co-founder and CEO of layer-1 blockchain Saga, believes that digital assets began as a bipartisan issue but gravitated toward the Republican Party in the last election cycle due to the previous administration’s anti-crypto policies.
In an interview with Cointelegraph’s Turner Wright during the ETHDenver Conference, Liao pointed to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) lack of cohesive policy as the industry’s primary challenge. The CEO said:
“The crypto community felt as though the administration of power was not really helping out the crypto community with policies that would be productive for this industry, and so they decided to pivot over to the Republican Party.”
“The alliance between Republicans and crypto is a matter of anti-establishment feeling, so they’re both agitating against the order,” Liao continued.
Campaign contributions also played a major role in the GOP’s shift toward pro-crypto policies, said the CEO, adding that it was a hard truth that financial contributions often dictate how much a particular constituency is heard by elected lawmakers.
A graph showing corporate campaign contributions during election cycles with crypto industry spending highlighted in orange. Source: Public Citizen
Related: SEC task force continues meeting with firms over crypto regulations
US government resets relationship with crypto industry
Following the re-election of President Donald Trump in the United States and the resignation of former SEC chairman Gary Gensler, federal regulators radically altered their posturing toward the crypto industry.
The SEC dropped enforcement actions against six crypto firms in February 2025 as part of the agency’s regulatory pivot.
Coinbase was the first crypto firm to see relief. The SEC agreed to drop its enforcement action against the company after a lengthy legal battle lasting well over a year.
On Feb. 21, the SEC dropped its investigation into OpenSea — one of the leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces after probing the platform to determine whether NFT sales constituted securities offerings.
Uniswap announced the end of an SEC investigation into the decentralized exchange firm on Feb. 25 — a development that was lauded as a major win for decentralized finance.
More recently, on Feb. 26, the SEC closed its investigation of Gemini — a centralized crypto exchange, and on Feb. 27, the agency agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against crypto firm Consensys.
Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions
